168 
CH. vn] A TYPICAL AFRICAN SCENE 
paces. As soon as I had pulled trigger I wheeled to 
watch the rhino. It started round at the shot and 
gazed toward us with its ears cocked forward, but made 
no movement to advance. While a couple of porters 
were dressing the hyena, I could not help laughing at 
finding that we were the centre of a thoroughly African 
circle of deeply interested spectators. We were in the 
middle of a vast plain, covered with sun-scorched grass, 
and here and there a stunted thorn ; in the background 
were isolated barren hills, and the mirage wavered in 
the distance. Vultures wheeled overhead. The rhino, 
less than half a mile away, stared steadily at us. Wilde¬ 
beest—their heavy forequarters and the carriage of 
their heads making them look like bison—and harte- 
beest were somewhat nearer, in a ring all round us, 
intent upon our proceedings. Four topi became so 
much interested that they approached within two 
hundred and fifty yards and stood motionless. A buck 
tommy came even closer, and a zebra trotted by at 
about the same distance, uttering its queer bark or 
neigh. It continued its course past the rhino, and 
started a new train of ideas in the latter’s muddled 
reptilian brain ; round it wheeled, gazed after the zebra, 
and then evidently concluded that everything was 
normal, for it lay down to sleep. 
On we went, past a wildebeest herd lying down ; at 
a distance they looked exactly like bison as they used to 
lie out on the prairie in the old days. We halted for 
an hour and a half to rest the men and horses, and took 
our lunch under a thick-trunked olive-tree that must 
have been a couple of centuries old. Again we went 
on, ever scanning through the glasses every distant 
object which we thought might possibly be a lion, and 
ever being disappointed. A serval-cat jumped up 
